Iran's Oil Minister Reaffirms President's Claim Of 40% More Oil Exports

The eastern district of New York said in a statement on Friday that a criminal complaint has been unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn charging Kambiz Attar Kashani with conspiring to provide products such as subscriptions to proprietary software, fixed attenuators, power supplies and storage systems to the government of Iran.

Kashani was arrested on Thursday in Chicago, Illinois, and will remain in custody pending a detention hearing.

From around February 2019 through June 2021, Kashani orchestrated an elaborate scheme to evade US export laws to send US tech to “the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which has been designated by the United States government as acting for or on behalf of terrorist organizations”, said Breon Peace, the attorney for the eastern district of NY.

The statement noted that “the CBI has materially assisted, sponsored and provided financial, material or technological support, goods or services to Lebanese Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, and to the Qods Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)”.

To procure the items, he allegedly used two United Arab Emirates companies as fronts to deceive multiple US technology companies, Peace added.

FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Joseph R. Bonavolanta said that “Kashani profited financially by strengthening the economy of one of the world’s most infamous state sponsors of terrorism, while circumventing critical US laws”.

Hatami argued in an analysis published by proreform Fararu website in Tehran that based on official assessments made by the Iranian parliament's research center, the Iranian government has a net debt of 10,000 trillion rials half of which should be paid during the next three years.

At current exchange rates this figure is around $40,000 billion, or more than twice the total annual oil exports at current levels.

According to Hatami, even if Iran makes a deal with the United States and frees its frozen assets abroad and can sell more oil and repatriate its revenues, it must use the petrodollars to pay debts.

Hatami added that although there are promising signals coming from the nuclear talks in Vienna to revive the JCPOA, one cannot take those seriously as long as Iran has many problems in its relations with the international community.

"Let us assume there is an agreement and Iran's assets abroad are freed. What comes next", Hatami asked. The answer is, it depends on many factors, including the extent of Iran's access to those assets, Iran's foreign relations and the balance of power in the region. On the other hand, in the domestic front, the Iranian government is so deeply plunged into debt that petrodollars cannot save its economy.

Iran's foreign debt is less than $10 billion, but its debts to domestic institutions amount to $40 billion. In that sense, Iran owes a lot of money to next generations of Iranians as governments have borrowed from both the Central Bank and the foreign currency and gold reserve that belongs to the coming generations. As an example, next year, the government should pay 1,500 trillion rials of its debts as well as 500 trillion rials of interest on the bonds it has sold to cover its budget deficit.

The Islamic Republic has not been able to generate sufficient economic growth in its more than 40 years of existence. Average growth has barely reached 3 percent. With US sanctions since 2018, it has resorted to two dangerous methods to finance its budget, borrowing from its own banks and printing money. Both have led to a nearly 50 percent inflation.

A report prepared by the previous government (which was denied later by the Planning and Budget Organization) said that the Iranian government will be on the verge of bankruptcy in case there is no agreement in Vienna.

Meanwhile, a more optimistic report published by Iran Diplomacy website, which is close to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, says regardless of the current situation that isolates Iran from international markets and banking systems, the country's economy is still relatively resilient.

The website's over-optimism portrayed an outlook in which Iran's "Looking East" policy and its partnership with China, Russia and Iran's neighbors in Central Asia has made Tehran capable of making its "Jihadist Economy" work.

The author, Ardavan Amir Aslani warned that if Iran fails to end its isolation, within a few years, Tehran will be in a situation that its economy cannot be saved by any reformist or conservative government.

In its statement Wednesday, Korea's ministry of foreign affairs said the US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley and South Korea's First Vice-Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun had discussed the issue of remittance of arbitral award to the Dayyani family.

The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued the "specific license" on January 6 to authorize the Seoul to pay the Iranian investor. The license, the Korean foreign ministry said, approves the use of the US financial system for the execution of the arbitral award.

The US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said last week, ahead of South Korea's First Vice-Foreign Minister's arrival in Vienna, that Washington would waive possible sanctions on South Korea over frozen Iranian assets only with “everything” agreed in Vienna nuclear talks. The talks that started last April continue with no prospect of an early resolution.

It is not clear how and on what conditions the US has agreed to allow the payment by Korea.

Since introducing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions and leaving the JCPOA in 2018, the US has threatened punitive action against any third party buying Iran’s oil or dealing with its financial sector. Two South Korea banks hold $7-9 billion of Iranian money, largely owed for oil imports prior to American sanctions. In 2021 Iran detained a Korean tankerand banned the import of home appliances made by the two leading Korean manufacturers, Samsung and LG.

The payment of the compensation to the Dayyani family appears to be intended to mend trade relations between South Korea and Iran.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Septemberbanned imports from South Korea’s LG and Samsung products, which he only referred to as "two South Korean companies." While he said this was meant to boost local manufacturers, state media also saw the move as a diplomatic message.

The Dayyani family who will be receiving the award now initiated an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) arbitration against South Korea's government in 2015 over their down-payment for the acquisition of Daewoo Electronics in 2010. The acquisition never took place, but the deposit was confiscated in the process in Korea.

In 2018, an arbitration tribunal ruled in favor of the Dayyanis, but the South Korean government said it could not make a payment due to US banking sanctions.

The Dayyani family is a major shareholder of Entekhab, a private industrial and investment group that owns several home appliance companies including Snowa. The latter is now the largest home appliance producer in Iran. The industrial group previously produced home appliances under the Daewoo brand in Iran.

Mohammadreza Dayyani, the CEO of Entekhab, in October said South Korean companies had abandoned the Iranian market after the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal and re-imposition of sanctions despite having an 80 percent share in Iran's home appliances market.

Even after the ban, Dayyani said, Korean products which are unofficially imported by individuals from neighboring countries have a considerable share in the Iranian market.

South Korean ambassador Yun Kang-hyeo told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) in December that his country had suffered more than any – other than Iran itself – from US sanctions.

In the same interview, ambassador Yun alleged that Snowa, the company owned by the Dayyani family, was behind the ban on Korean home appliances because the return of Korean giants would be detrimental to the huge investments they have made to produce their own brand.

"I explained to Snowa that they need to cooperate with Korean companies such as Samsung and LG if they want progress in the production of home appliances in Iran. "The CEO of Snowa accepted my suggestion and we discussed how we could find a good way for cooperation," the Korean ambassador said according to ILNA.

Speaking via video link with religious leaders, Raisi said that many believed his government would encounter serious financial problems amid continuing United States sanctions, but oil exports have increased and “we are not worried.”

Raisi who expressed serious concern over Iran’s high inflation rate, reportedly at around 50 percent this year, said the government has no concerns about its foreign currency reserves and the value of the rial.

Iran’s currency has fallen eightfold since the United States withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, JCPOA, and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions including third-party penalties for buying Iranian oil. Poverty is increasing in the country, according to state-controlled media, with government trying to slash subsidies because of financial pressures it faces.

Oil exports dropped to around 200,000 barrels per day in 2019, but in late 2020, Tehran increased its sales through illicit channels. China is the biggest buyer, with shipments disguised as exports from other countries.

Negotiation to restore the JCPOA and end US sanctions started last April but so far Iran has pursued a hard bargaining posture and an agreement seems to be far away.

In a Bloomberg report published on Tuesday, data by market intelligence firm Kpler indicate that the world’s biggest oil importer bought 324 million barrels from Iran and Venezuela in 2021, about 53% more than the year before.

Chinese buyers, particularly private firms also known as "teapot" refineries, have benefited from Washington’s sanctions on Iran and Venezuela because they bargain for more discounts while other buyers have stopped purchases in fear of US financial system freezing their assets.

A global 50-percent rise in prices over the past year and Beijing’s issuance of more import quotas have encouraged teapots to buy more from Iran because these shipments are “up to 10% cheaper” and not registered in official customs data.

Iran was producing 3.8 million barrels a day before the United States pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement in May 2018 and imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports.

Iran’s exports dropped from more than 2 million barrels per day in 2016-2017 to less than 200,000 in 2019 but started to grow in September 2020. No one can say with any certainty how much Tehran is exporting but estimates say volumes reach over 600,000 barrels per day.